Managing Through Change

Managing Through Change

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing a series of blogs aimed at understanding and managing organizational change as it seems to be a pertinent topic in today’s rapidly advancing world.

As a contractor for Talent Management and Management Consultant, I found this article stimulated my personal and professional thoughts surrounding change.

The author points out four main areas where leaders need to step up to facilitate healthy, successful change. Under the first point, “Recognize Embedded Tensions and Paradoxes” Ready suggests viewing change through a positive lens stating, “At the core of every change initiative is the desire to breathe new life into the organization―to revitalize ways of thinking, behaving and working.” This struck me as so true, but this isn’t a typical lens through which change is viewed.

Even though the one thing we as humans can count on is, change, characteristically, change infuses an unsettling reaction that is ripe for fear to take hold and grow. To counter this, leaders need to create a structure, as Ready points out, founded on the positive aspects and outcomes of change. One of which is being “revitalized” or becoming better than we were in our original pre-change state.

At a recent Leadership Development Institute I participated in, I listened to a CEO liken change to the re-building process a community experiences after a hurricane. By using language that turns the focus of change to an instrument of improvement, it is much more likely to quell fears that are only perpetuated by the verbiage of the “scary unknown.” This is the “revitalization” of being, thinking and behaving that Ready draws attention to in the following article.